fantasy
The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, The Other Palace - all Greek to meSaturday, 30 November 2024Percy Jackson is neither the missing one from Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael, nor an Australian Test cricketer of the 1920s, but a New York teenager with dyslexia and ADHD who keeps getting expelled from school. He’s a bit of a... Read more... |
Venom: The Last Dance review - Tom Hardy's people-eater bows outSaturday, 26 October 2024The once invincible superhero genre may have finally hit the skids, but Tom Hardy’s alien anti-hero stays intermittently fresh in his saga’s supposed finale, styled by writer-director Kelly Marcel as a partial romcom between parasitic, people-eating... Read more... |
The Micro Golden Age of Mid Eighties Fantasy FilmsSaturday, 03 August 2024“When we hear the formula ‘once upon a time,’ or any of its variants,” wrote Angela Carter in her introduction to her Book of Fairy Tales, “we know in advance that what we are about to hear isn’t going to pretend to be true. We say to children: Don’... Read more... |
Spirited Away, London Coliseum review - spectacular re-imagining of beloved filmThursday, 09 May 2024Legions of Ghibli fanatics may love the heartwarming My Neighbour Totoro and the heartbreaking Grave of the Fireflies, but they revere Spirited Away, their, our, The Godfather and The Wizard of Oz rolled into one. Totoro has been magnificently... Read more... |
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire review - a bit of a monster let-downSaturday, 30 March 2024The latest blockbuster of 2024 is this disappointing fifth entry in the so-called MonsterVerse franchise, owned by Legendary Pictures. About half of the film contain actors, while half of it is computer-generated – the likely brief future of cinema... Read more... |
Michael Powell: a happy time with Bartók’s BluebeardTuesday, 19 December 2023In his final years Michael Powell mooted the possibility of a Bartók trilogy. He wanted to add to the growing popularity of his work on Bluebeard’s Castle, the deepest of one-act operas, an idea he had previously rejected of filming the lurid "... Read more... |
Dead Dad Dog, Finborough Theatre review - Scottish two-hander plays differently 35 years on, but still entertainsSaturday, 14 October 2023I know, I was there. Well, not in Edinburgh in 1985, but in Liverpool in 1981, and the pull of London and the push from home, was just as strong for me back then as it is for Eck in John McKay’s comedy Dead Dad Dog. Back in London for the... Read more... |
Robin Hood. The Legend. Re-written, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - no bullseye for new take on familiar charactersMonday, 26 June 2023After the pantos, the movies (epic, camp and animated) and the television series, is there anything new to be mined in the story of Robin Hood? Probably not, as this messy, misjudged show takes that hope and fires an arrow through its heart.We’re in... Read more... |
Beau is Afraid review - life's ordeals in lengthy detailSaturday, 20 May 2023Life's journey is a challenge, and then some, for Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix), the beleaguered Odysseus/Job (you choose!) equivalent figure at the savage heart of Ari Aster's new film Beau is Afraid. But imagine surviving unimaginable... Read more... |
The Good Person of Szechwan, Lyric Hammersmith review - wild ride in hyperreality slides byMonday, 24 April 2023As the UK undergoes yet another political convulsion, this time concerning the threshold for ministers being shitty to fellow workers, it is apt that Bertolt Brecht’s parable about the challenges of being good in a dysfunctional society hits London... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Adventures of Baron MunchausenSunday, 19 February 2023“He won’t get far on hot air and fantasy,” Jonathan Pryce’s cruel bureaucrat huffs, as Baron Munchausen (John Neville) bests besieged city walls in a balloon sewn from a half-ton of knickers. “I hope this movie expands people’s ideas of what is... Read more... |
Hex, National Theatre review - 12 months after being sent to sleep by Covid, Rufus Norris's show is backWednesday, 07 December 2022Hovering way, way above us, three aptly named high fairies, in voluminous chiffon, open a show that may not be airy in the metaphorical sense, but invites us to cast our eyes upwards continually – no bad thing to do in the bleak midwinter of 2022.... Read more... |
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